Wright Auction

While Brooklyn native Sante D'Orazio quickly became a high-profile photographer of models, actors, musicians, artists, and other celebrities starting in 1981, when he began work with Vogue Italia, his upbringing and training were decidedly traditional. Raised in a Catholic, Italian-American family, D'Orazio's father was a barber and his mother an opera singer. He studied fine art at Brooklyn College and photography with New York Photo League member Lou Bernstein, who lived near the D'Orazio family. Right before D'Orazio got his break, he assisted American painter Philip Pearlstein. D'Orazio's photos in Vogue Italia created a stir that led to attention from Andy Warhol's Interview magazine and several contracts in the fashion world, Hollywood, and business circles.

Intimately staged glimpses at famous faces and bodies, the photographs of Sante D'Orazio are by turns seductively and strikingly composed. His pictures offer the alluring illusion of direct access to glamor and fame. From supermodels like Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell, and Claudia Schiffer to actors like Al Pacino, Pamela Anderson, and Arnold Schwarzenegger to musicians like Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, and Anthony Kiedis, D'Orazio presents a hip, sexy portal to the so-called "beautiful people," who are often posed in various states of undress or in ways that play to their public personas. D'Orazio's photographs filter these larger-than-life, notorious, or impossibly attractive individuals through a flattering yet aesthetically sophisticated lens. Whether rendered in full color or black-and-white, D'Orazio sets a mood with the photographic medium: playing with shadow and light, alternating between vintage and contemporary styles, letting his palette range from cool and moody to warm and sultry.

Along with appearing in magazines such as Vogue, Allure, GQ, Vanity Fair, and Playboy, photographs by D'Orazio have been collected in six books, including A Private View (1998), Sante D'Orazio Photographs (2000), Pam: American Icon (2005), and Barely Private: A Diary Book 1997 – Present (2009). Over the years, D'Orazio has been exhibited at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Stellan Holm Gallery in New York City, Hilario Galguera Gallery in Mexico City, Kunsthaus Munich, Cameraworks Gallery in Berlin, and elsewhere.